Matt
by Blue Zombie
Summary: Little ficlet about when Matt dumps Paige at that restaurant, Matt's point of view.


I thought about Paige, beautiful high school girl who got me in so much trouble. Beautiful like a cat. But I wasn't so much in that space anymore, in that blaming place. Things happen. Maybe things happen for a reason, or what happens was meant to, somehow. Maybe God is watching. Maybe it's mother nature. I don't know. I just know that that nine to five dressed up, buttoned down existence wasn't quite for me. Maybe that's why I jeopardized it all with Paige. I mean, I did know what I was doing.

And I've got to meet her, at a restaurant. Well, I'm not polishing up for her. She'll either accept me or not as I am. I'm tired of fitting into the cookie cutter for these people. Bending and contorting my square peg for their round holes. Paige will be fine. After all, she's got all the answers.

So there she is. Look at her. Gorgeous blond hair, and that dress. I sort of felt like a heel in my scruff beard and bead necklace, my greasy hair. But I go over to her, and it's clear I'm late. But those eyes, those hard to describe, sea green eyes that make me feel almost troubled. I sit down in the midst of her gaze.

And she starts talking about the corporate world she thinks she knows about, Banting and the rest of it. That world will eat her alive and spit out her bones. I try to remind myself that she's just a kid, despite looking like a devastating woman she's only a child. But I can't help snapping at her.

"You think you have all the answers, but you don't even know the questions,"

I've hurt her, but perhaps I meant to. Maybe I meant to shake her world view, smug as it is. She wants money, big house, expensive car. There is more out there than that, at least I hope so or I am failing miserably. I've hurt her, and the sea green eyes swim with tears and I'm remorseful. So I dig around in my pockets and come up with a little parting gift.

She looks at it as though I just handed her a steaming turd in a bag instead of a joint. The tears are drying up as indignation and anger take their place, and she holds up the baggie and the joint.

"Drugs? You're dumping me and giving me drugs?" she said, and stated like that it sounds so bad. But maybe it isn't as bad as it seems. So I get up, and I give her a peck on the cheek and wish her well. It's sad, since this is probably the last time I'll be seeing her.

Out of the restaurant and back to my life, which doesn't include high school girls with sea green eyes. Maybe, for me, Paige was just a means to an end. She was a way to end my academic aspirations which were really just wearing me down, like the slow drip of water on stone. I could feel the soft power of my aspirations digging deeper, wearing deeper, taking everything.

Toronto streets, beautiful at dusk. I was trying to see the beauty in things, trying to live in the moment. In college everything was trapped under the glass of someday. Someday I'd graduate, someday I'd get some job, nothing was now. All my energy was projected toward the future, no wonder I had no energy for my every day life.

It was honestly too bad about Paige. Too bad that I hurt her the way that I did, that I made promises that I couldn't keep. That I was this glaring disappointment to her. It was really, just, unfortunate.

But I turned my face up under a streetlight, the orange glow almost warm. I heard the discordant tunes of some street kids playing music for money, and if I had any money I'd give it to them, tossing it in their open guitar cases and empty coffee cups.

It is not so ignoble to work with your hands, to labor a day under the sun, to toil like men from an earlier age had. I could go back to academia if the spirit moves me. I can drift on the currents of the wind. I can follow the waves of the sea. Money will not be a chain around my neck.

I gave Paige a joint but I still had one of my own. Ducked into an alley and lit it up, inhaled that heavy aroma, that nice THC right into my lungs, bloodstream, brain. Time to float, to feel different, to exist on a different plane. Bye Paige. It was fun.


End file.
